AFP/Pretoria
Emotional crowds gathered outside the hospital where Nelson Mandela lay in critical condition yesterday, as relatives and clan elders made preparations for the revered former South African leader’s final journey.
Supporters sang hymns for the 94-year-old architect of South Africa’s remarkable transition from almost half a century of white minority rule to landmark multiracial elections.
A candlelight vigil was held late Tuesday and a prayer read out by a South African archbishop to wish the Nobel Peace laureate a “peaceful, perfect, end”.
“We have been so united—blacks and whites together. That’s the thought of Mandela in us,” said Lerato Boulares, 35.
With his life seemingly slipping away, messages of support for the anti-apartheid hero blanketed a wall outside the hospital, including a poster bearing one of his most memorable quotes: “It only seems impossible until it’s done”.
The former political prisoner was hospitalised on June 8 with a stubborn lung problem dating from his 27 years locked up on the notorious Robben Island and in other apartheid prisons.
With his condition deteriorating, Mandela was breathing with the assistance of a life support ventilator, South African daily The Citizen reported, quoting unnamed family sources. Officially there was no change in Mandela’s condition, with President Jacob Zuma reporting he was still “in a critical condition.”
According to local media, elders from Mandela’s Thembu clan were due to visit the Nobel laureate.
The elders want to “discuss what should be done,” an unnamed local chief told local daily The Times, alluding to disagreement among family members over his burial site.
A row reportedly broke out between family members Tuesday over whether to move the graves of Mandela’s three children to his childhood village where he is expected to be laid to rest, with grandson Mandla Mandela said to have stormed out in anger.
Cape Town Archbishop Thabo Makgoba visited Pretoria’s Mediclinic Heart Hospital late Tuesday to pray with wife Graca Machel “at this hard time of watching and waiting”.
“Grant Madiba eternal healing and relief from pain and suffering,” the prayer said. “Grant him, we pray, a quiet night and a peaceful, perfect, end.”
A makeshift campsite has sprung up in front of the hospital as international television crews descend on South Africa awaiting word on Mandela’s health, competing with his supporters for space on the pavement.
“I pray for him, every day, every morning so he must not die now,” said Folashade Olaitan.
School children brought a poster they had drawn with the words “We love u Tata (father)”.
Zuma said that Mandela had spent his life “in dedication to humanity”.
Zuma led delegates at a union conference in a rousing song that evokes Mandela’s role as a moral compass and leader of the struggle for freedom: “As Mandela said to his followers, ‘This road we’ve embarked on is long; we’ll meet on Freedom Day’”.
Meanwhile messages of goodwill flooded in from overseas.
In only her fifth ever tweet, Hillary Clinton offered “love and prayers to our great friend, Madiba, his family and his nation during this difficult time”.